Ditch the pitch

Once advertisers have filtered the available agencies through the five common must-have criteria, they will arrive at a shortlist that excludes those that are patently not suited for the task. Advertisers can do this by answering these questions:

Must the agency have an international affiliation/connection?
If the answer is yes and the advertiser is a South African company, there are just 15 agencies to choose from.

How big is the advertiser's advertising budget?
If it is not very large, the advertiser is unlikely to get the attention they need from a large agency. Better a big fish in a small pond. Thus, unsuitable agencies can be further eliminated according to their size versus the size of the advertiser's budget.

Where must the agency be located?
This is a no-brainer. Agencies that aren't located where the advertiser needs them are automatically eliminated.

Conflicts of interest?
A simple question - do the agencies service conflicting business or not? Those that do are bumped off the list.

BEE?
An easy to answer question - an agency is either empowered or it isn't.

Having thus exhausted their must-have criteria, advertisers should proceed with the shortlisting process by rating the remaining agencies according to the top five agency performance criteria (of 2004). These are the top five performance requirements of ad agencies, as rated by advertisers and drawn from Objectivity's annual Ad Agency Performance Profiles."

According to Objectivity's 2004 Ad Agency Performance Profiles the top five criteria are:
- Professional/Reliable - right first time, on time
- Creativity
- Client Understanding
- Strategy/Planning
- Effectiveness

The only way to judge performance across these criteria, is to speak to the people who use the agencies; those who have experienced their service - their clients. It is reference checking, as you would when employing staff.

Think about it, how can you accurately judge performance across any set of performance criteria through the pitch process? The only thing you are assessing using the pitch methodology is their skills in presentation.

So is the pitch process valid? Not if the advertiser is concerned with effective communication that creates or increases awareness of their brand; creates or shifts the right perceptions that will grow their brand, and/or; generates physical responses for their brand.

Unless the advertiser is unethical and uses the process to gather the best new ideas for its existing agency to implement, there is no justification for a pitch process. Fortunately a growing number of advertisers are tiring of this ineffective, flawed and outdated process. This has become evident from the fact that we are increasingly being approached by advertisers who want an objective approach to shortlisting the agencies best suited to meet their advertising needs.